Is the president being impeached?
Is the president being impeached? (I hope so.)
I have been watching a lot of C-SPAN lately. It’s basically the only thing worth watching, now that all TV pretty much sucks.
Not a lot of people watch C-SPAN. So I’m one of the small percentage of Americans who know, at this moment, that Representative Dennis Kucinich is on the Congressional floor presenting his resolution calling for Bush’s impeachment. It’s a list of 35 charges, (list here) mostly Constitutional violations and Geneva Convention violations, and he’s been reading it for about an hour, and he’s about halfway through it. A member of the House of Representatives presenting a resolution detailing charges is one of the first steps in impeachment proceedings.
The charges range from election fraud, including disenfranchisement, to illegal wiretapping to illegal torture, to lying about our reasons for going to war, to handing out padded military contracts to his buddies. And a lot more. I can barely keep up. And I’m as giddy as a kid in a candy store about this. So is Debra Jean. She’s glued to the screen. We both love the Constitution. A lot.
It’s history in the making, and it’s not even on CNN.com or Yahoo News yet. I think it’s an emergency meeting, because it’s 10:30 PM in DC right now. I remember seeing the effort to impeach Richard Nixon as news coverage on TV when I was a kid, but he was never actually impeached. (He quit before that could happen, and Ford pardoned Nixon as soon as he took office.) And Nixon was basically just going to be charged with, as I recall, one thing (conspiring to pay people to bug a hotel room). The charges being read against Bush are many, and many are far more serious.
Kucinich is quoting the US Constitution a lot. I wish Kucinich had made it to run for president. He’s smart, and has other things going for him.
I have a prediction: tonight on the Colbert show, Colbert will report this out of character, as he really is, not as his “alter ego” who would be outraged by this. He’ll just state it, and let people cheer.
Here’s a quick 20-minute podcast I recorded, and uploaded while the proceedings were still being read live. It’s about 17 minutes of the charges being read, and about three minutes of us commenting on it. We’re pretty much in shock. And pretty happy.
(behind every great short man is a smart, better looking, and often taller, woman)
June 9th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Clinton was impeached for getting a hummer.
But bush gets to skate?
I dont think so!
June 9th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
the polls are 9-1. !
W00t!
June 9th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
This went on for three hours. Was amazing.
Waiting to see what happens tomorrow.
I can’t believe there’s nothing in the mainstream news about this yet.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I don’t have cable, barely listen to radio. So, I hadn’t heard anything about this. Anyway, will look forward to future developments. Kinda ashame that nobody took this up a couple years ago. Oh, well. Bush’ll still be in office for a few months. There’s still time.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
“I don’t have cable, barely listen to radio. ”
That’s why I recorded some of it, many people don’t get C-SPAN.
Funny, I was just joking to Debra Jean last night, “The way things are going, they’ll probably impeach Bush his last week in office.” Had no idea this was coming.
It doesn’t mean he’ll be impeached. But it is the first step in the possibility of it happening.
By the way, “impeach” doesn’t mean you’re kicked out of office. It means charges are brought against you by Congress. Only two presidents have been impeached, Bill Clinton (acquitted) and Andrew Johnson (acquitted).
Only a few other American high office holders have been impeached:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History_of_federal_impeachment_proceedings
MWD
June 10th, 2008 at 12:08 am
here’s some video of it:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Kucinich_presents_Bush_impeachment_articles_0609.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv2SdTeN7dY
MWD
June 10th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Kucinich is a joke. Probably one of the only congresscritters the Dems could get to stand up there & deliver that speech. I’m not saying that most of the allegations wasn’t true, its just I think they used him as a straw man to say what needed to be said. If there was any political blow back they had political cover. “Hell, it’s Kucinich; he’s crazy.”
The fact the mainstream media didn’t pick it up pretty much guarantees that the congress wont pursue it very aggressively. I don’t think this will ever come out of committee, assuming it makes it to committee. Although it is nice to hear truth being spoke to power, even if it is being ignored.
RD
June 11th, 2008 at 12:06 am
24 hours later:
NOTHING on TV about it, outside of C-SPAN. Nothing even on Colbert or Daily show. Amazing. I’m sort of in shock.
Oh well, tomorrow congress may vote on it, and maybe either way it will make the friggin’ papers.
MWD
June 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Mainstream media yawns as Kucinich offers impeachment
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Mainstream_media_snooze_as_Kucinich_offers_0610.html
June 15th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Maybe people really want Bush–they don’t want him out. The thought chills me, though. I’m not sure democracy can function if a total incompetent like GW can’t be brought out of power. Can you imagine him as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company?? But as Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
June 15th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
” Can you imagine him as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company?? ”
They’d fire his ass. Unlike government work, in the private sector there’s no tenure when you fuck up the bottom line.